3i8 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



We thus get at the stage known as " guilt," z'.e., the 

 violation of a duty to the state. 



The higher stage, in which a man believes himself 

 bound to duty to a God, brings with it the sense of 

 " sin ". 



So that what we call " falling " is really, and indeed 

 obviously, " a conscious violation of law ". It is just what 

 the serpent is represented to have foretold ; that being 

 possibly the familiar experience of the writer of the 

 story. 



Most of the acts of guilt, as theft and murder, were 

 not considered such in early days when every man's 

 hand was natui-ally against every other. Even nearly 

 up to our Lord's time, every nation of the East had been 

 naturally hostile against every other whom they might 

 attack, slay, despoil at will, not because of any quarrel — 

 there need have been none — but solely because they 

 were foreigners and that there had been no treaty. It 

 was Rome which gathered together into one hetero- 

 geneous mass all the nations of the then world ; and so 

 made a rough field more or less prepared to be sown with 

 the seed of the gospel. 



Now, the whole matter as to the origin of evil is put 

 into the short sentence of St. Paul : " I had not known 

 sin but by the law ... for without the law sin was 

 dead ".1 



The story of Adam and Eve puts the case very 

 clearly. The writer, apparently wishing to account for 

 the origin of wickedness prevalent in his day, invents the 

 story and shows how the First Law given to man, 

 brings in the possibility of Sin^ by its violation. The 

 command is like an order given by a parent to his 



' Rom, vii. 7, 8, 



